


Flerken ex Machina

by Phoenix_of_Athena



Category: Alien Series, Captain Marvel (2019), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: BAMF Jones (Alien), Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Fix-It, Flerken, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Xenomorphs (Alien), basically i watched alien again and saw the ginger tabby and was like "wait. what if.", ish, yes I just made that a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22569010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenix_of_Athena/pseuds/Phoenix_of_Athena
Summary: In which Jones the cat is a Flerken a la Captain Marvel's cat, and the problem of the xenomorph is solved much more easily.
Relationships: Jones (Alien) & Ellen Ripley
Comments: 10
Kudos: 71





	Flerken ex Machina

**Author's Note:**

> This is just crack; I'd apologize, but I actually had fun writing it. Though! In my defense I was encouraged.

Bringing Kane back aboard the ship took both Ash and Parker lugging him up the ramp. Ripley, for the most part, stayed away and didn’t watch, too furious with the proceedings to take part. She was also fairly keen to keep away from the rest of the crew; virtually _all of them_ were pissed off at her, and vice versa. 

Of course, no confrontation could be avoided for long when you were trapped in an enclosed space with the person you wanted to avoid, and once they’d brought their injured crewmate into the medical room, Lambert had practically jumped her. It took both Brett and Parker to wrestle them apart. But after that, there were more important things to deal with; no matter what Ripley’s position had been about bringing Kane onboard, now that he was here and in their care, she _did_ want the best for him as much as the next person.

Unfortunately, what followed was worse than a nightmare.

 _First,_ the horrible, face-clinging alien had acid blood. _Acid blood!_ Ripley hadn’t even thought that such a thing was possible—but what did she know, she wasn’t a xenobiologist or a Science Officer by trade. (No, the _honor_ of being Science Officer went to _Ash,_ who, like virtually everyone but Parker and Brett, she had a bone to pick with. Especially with his clinical and obstructive way of dealing with the situation—it wouldn’t _kill_ him to be straight with them all, would it? But no, he spoke practically in riddles.) And the blood ate through the floor, and there was nothing that they could do. So all they _could_ do was wait. Well, wait and ignore Ripley’s advice again, and bring the shuttle back up into space.

And _then,_ of course, they got the news that the creature had disappeared—one moment, it was attached to Kane’s face like a grotesque mask, and then the next time Ash checked in on him, it was _gone._ Ripley had reported alongside Dallas to look for it. 

On her way down the frankly poorly-designed hallways of the ship (because you’d think that a company as wealthy as the one they worked for would be able to afford a vessel that was consistently well-lit, or had cleaner looking walls), she’d almost tripped right over Jones. The orange tabby had darted seemingly out of nowhere to wind between her legs, and even after she stumbled, cursing, into a wall, he had padded along right at her heels. 

“You’ve gotta be more careful, Jonesy,” Ripley sighed, leaning down to scratch the cat between the ears. “We’re in enough trouble as it is, without me breaking a leg falling.”

The cat just meowed, looking up at her with large, dark eyes.

“Go on, you silly thing,” she said, and continued on. Jones followed her—and he followed her closely enough that the three crewmen had to shut the doors to the medical room close behind them immediately, lest the little beast get in.

The events that followed _that_ only provided further fuel for her nightmares to last for _years._

First, the alien face-sucking thing had dropped right on top of her and given her the fight of her life (so far!). And then, incredibly, after the thing was deemed well and dead, Kane had seemed to be better.

_Seemed to be._

And it had been like an honest miracle, enough to lift all of their moods and send them joking and laughing back into their kitchen like it was a party. And if she’d noticed that Jones was back to acting skittish around them, she chalked it up to the noise and the crowd. And when the cat growled and slunk around the corner, well. That’s cats for you. Sweet little things, generally, but hard to read. 

But of _course_ that couldn’t be the end of it, because Ellen Ripley’s life was an honest nightmare now, hadn’t you heard?

It happened like this: everyone was _happy._ Everyone was laughing, and complaining about the food; even Ash seemed pleased, in his stoic way, to have an alien sample to bring back. And then Kane had _choked_ , and spasmed, and collapsed across the table.

They had all jumped to their feet at once, and Ripley had felt her heart lodge in her throat—because as frustrated as she was with her crewmates, they were _still_ the people who she’d been working with for _months,_ on-and-off when they woke up from their stasis naps. And right now, she knew that the alien had done something to Kane that they hadn’t foreseen, and she felt as terrified and helpless as each of the others. They should have kept him under observation longer, they should have, should have…. But Ripley hadn’t butted in again, oh _no;_ despite her earlier misgivings, she’d seen how much they all listened to her and valued her opinion. And now Kane seemed to be having some kind of seizure on the table, and they didn’t have any equipment, and—!

 _That_ was _blood._

Blood staining the front of his white shirt.

Everyone was screaming, leaning in close to hold him still, and more _blood_ went _flying,_ and—!

And.

A _creature_ clawed itself out of Kane’s stomach, and it _looked at them._ The grotesque, blood-streaked thing seemed to look at each of them individually, and Ripley wanted to scream, to _kill it—_ perhaps _crush it_ with the tin of condensed milk that had fallen from the table; but Ash said not to do anything, and. Well. He knew the most out of all of them, didn’t he? So they didn’t touch it. And then the creature skittered away with a high shriek, and there was chaos again.

(At the time, she didn’t think it odd that Jones had completely vanished. Obviously, any thought of the cat couldn’t have been further from her mind, because Kane was _dead._ And they had the kind of monster that _burst itself from people’s stomachs_ on the loose. She couldn’t have known that even as she and her crewmates geared up to catch the alien, Jones had gone to do some hunting of his own.)

Ash provided them with fancy motion detectors, and Brett had pulled out _cattle prods_ from god knows where, and they went monster hunting in groups of three. 

Ripley went with Brett and Parker down to some of the storage areas near the shuttle bay. All three of them were on edge, already wrung out and hyper vigilant from the scares and traumas of the last few days, and walking down into dark hallways didn’t help.

“Fuse must’ve gone out,” said Parker, and Ripley wondered once again why the company had sent them into space in a ship this poor. But then, they all already knew that crew safety and craft maintenance wasn’t a priority, or the two men that she was with _would_ have been getting the paycheck they kept asking for.

The lights came on with a flicker, and their group drifted into the storage room in front of them. The tap of their shoes seemed loud against the grated floor, and every whine of Ash’s machine made them jump. When it whirred into life in _earnest,_ they scrambled for their weapons and the net.

Ripley let the motion detector guide them along the wall of lockers until it was pointed directly at a closed door on the bottom shelf. The three exchanged unnerved and shivery glances, and shuffled into position. Then the door was flung open, and the net was raised, and Brett cried out, “Don’t!” 

Jones hissed at them from inside the storage locker, swiped at Brett, and made a break for it.

“No!” said Parker, “Why did you do that?”

“We should have caught him,” Ripley sighed shakily. “Now we’ll just pick him up again.”

“I’ll go and get him,” Brett said, and they...they let him go. The strain of the situation was messing with their reasoning, and they _let him go alone._

But it didn’t take them long to realize what they’d done, and almost in unison, Ripley and Parker said:

“Did we—?”

“We were supposed to stay together—”

“What if—?”

And they both went after him, following the echo of his voice as he talked to Jones. It sounded like he’d found the cat and was trying to coax him out of somewhere he couldn’t reach.

Ripley and Parker’s feet pounded across the grating of the floor as they rounded a bend into the huge dark room that stored the spare shuttle—and for one, horrible moment, they thought that they were too late.

The alien—the _monster—_ was huge. As tall as a man—no, _taller—_ with an elongated, bulbous head, a prehensile tail, and unnervingly human-like hands. Its mouth was open, and it was leaning over Brett. It’s dripping jaws had parted to reveal a second mouth like a moray’s, only longer, pale and fanged—and it towered over their crewmate, and it’s mouth lashed out—only for far too much to suddenly happen at once.

From where he’d crouched behind Brett’s heels, Jones darted out, and even as the monster’s inner jaw lunged, the cat opened its own mouth—and _oh lord,_ that wasn’t a cat.

Because Jones had a second, nested, mouth as well, and out of it poured _tentacles,_ which flashed out to lash around the monster, wrap it up, and suck it in to swallow it. 

It was gone.

Brett fell to his knees. Ripley and Parker stared at the space where the monster had been. Jones licked his lips and then his paw, and began to wash his face.

Brett let out a rattle of a breath and looked down at the cat, which paused in his washing to blink back up at him. Then Jones meowed and butted his head against Brett’s hip.

Brett startled back, and Parker jolted from his stunned stupor to rush to his side. After a moment, Ripley entered too. 

Ash’s complicated motion detector was dropped carelessly to the floor with a clatter, and the net followed it. Under her shoes, the wet grating squeaked, and the cascading, misty drops felt fresh and cold against her sweaty face. 

Stopping in front of Jones, she dropped into a crouch.

She held out a hand. The cat rubbed against it, and she whispered, “You’re a good boy, aren’t you Jonsey?”

Jones purred and rubbed his ears against her knuckles.

“Yeah, you’re a good boy. Knew there was a reason you were my favorite crewmate.” She sighed. “Don’t know how we’ll explain this to the others, though,” she said. “Do you have any ideas?”

Jones didn’t answer her, of course, but Ripley could have _sworn_ she saw him wink.

**Author's Note:**

> Heya! Thanks for reading. Let me know if there are any tags that you think I should add to this nonsense. XD


End file.
